The present invention relates to articles into the blisters of a blister band to produce blister packs. More precisely, the present invention relates to a unit for feeding articles to the blister band.
Automatic blistering machines are known in the prior art, which produce blister packs from a band of a heat-formable material.
The machines form a regular plurality of blisters on the heat-formable band and fill them with relative articles; then, the blisters are closed hermetically by a sealing film associated to the blister band.
More precisely, the known blistering machines include, arranged in a line, a station where one or more bobbins of heat-formable band are disposed, a station for heat forming the band unwinding from the bobbin being used, a station for feeding articles to the blister band, a station for checking the presence of articles in the blisters of the band, a station for sealing blister band and a station, where the blister band is cut to obtain single blister packs.
Then, the blister packs are sent to a packaging machine.
The feeding station of the above mentioned machines needs to be cleaned during the size changeover or when the type of articles to be packaged is changed.
During the machine operative steps, fragments of articles are in fact released in the feeding station and must be accurately removed to avoid any contamination of subsequent packs.
Obviously, in case of the size changeover, the operative means must be substituted and the common parts need to be cleaned; in case the articles type is changed maintaining the size, all means of the feeding station must be cleaned.
Cleaning of the articles feeding station is a critical operation performed on the blistering machine.
Actually, the machine must be stopped, obviously affecting the production rate. Moreover, expensive manpower is required.
The object of the present invention is to resolve the above problem by proposing a unit for feeding articles to a blister band in a blistering machine, which is easy to clean in an environment different than the machine processing environment.
Another object of the present invention is to propose a feeding unit, whose shape allows to speed up the size changeover.
A further object of the present invention is to prevent powders and/or fragments produced by the articles from spreading into the machine environment.
A still further object of the present invention is to propose a unit which fulfills the above objects without affecting the production rate and functionality of the blistering machine.
In accordance with the invention, the unit for feeding article to a blister band is defined by the features of the independent claim, while preferred features are defined in the dependent claims.